A wide variety of electronic devices are available on the market today. Example electronic devices include communication devices, such as two-way radios, mobile telephones, smart phones, tablets, personal digital assistants (PDAs), digital media players, to name a few. The electronic devices typically include one or more controllers for carrying out desired functionally of each device. These controllers may be, for example, platform application specific integrated circuits (platform ASICs). The controllers interface with peripheral devices to assist in accomplishing the various functions of the controller. Each peripheral device can have a different communication interface compliant to one or more specific protocols. Each peripheral communication protocol may stipulate a particular number of input/output physical interconnections, each interconnection conveying various digital signals using different clocking strategies, different frequency data transmissions, and different data packet sizes, among other variations. Typically, a controller is coupled to each peripheral device using dedicated pins for data communications, for one or more clock signals, and for a chip select signal. With an ever increasing need for controllers to connect to more and varying peripheral devices, the number of pins required on controllers is increasing. An increase in the number of pins can increase the size, cost, power requirements, and design complexity of the controller.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved systems and methods for a real-time reconfigurable serial input/output interface of a controller.
Skilled artisans will appreciate that elements in the figures are illustrated for simplicity and clarity and have not necessarily been drawn to scale. For example, the dimensions of some of the elements in the figures may be exaggerated relative to other elements to help to improve understanding of embodiments of the present invention.
The apparatus and method components have been represented where appropriate by conventional symbols in the drawings, showing only those specific details that are pertinent to understanding the embodiments of the present invention so as not to obscure the disclosure with details that will be readily apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of the description herein.